If you’re strictly a photographer and not interested in graphic design, then all categories except the last 2 should be of interest to you.

If you’re a graphic designer or a photographer that wants to create ads, then all categories should be your focus! Unless, of course, you’re not interested in web design.

DIGITAL IMAGING

As a digital imaging artist, you must have a basic understanding of the digital world to get the most from your artwork.

The following terms cover the basics all photographers (and designers) should know.

Digital imagery is quite different from photographic imaging in many aspects.

Bit-Depth

This term refers to the number of colors or shades of gray in an image.

The higher the bit-depth, the more colors will be used to display an image.

Like “resolution,” the higher the bit-depth, the larger the file size.

The main benefit of using a higher Bit-Depth is little to no banding. Depending on the Bit-Depth used.

For example, an 8 Bit landscape photo could display banding in the sky.

The color transition from dark to light may not have enough colors to make a smooth transition from one end to the other.

However, if you increase the number of colors captured (i.e., 16 bit vs. 8 bit), the transition will be much smoother thanks to more colors to fill in the gaps.

8 Bit Image

These images have up to 256 colors or shades of gray.

Since an image is displayed in RGB, each color channel will result in 256 shades of color for that channel.

If we take 256 (Red) x 256 (Green) x 256 (Blue), we end up with…

0

…colors in our image.

16 Bit Images

These images are made up of 65,536 levels of color!

So…

65,536 (Red) x 65,536 (Green) x 65,536 (Blue) equals…

0

…colors in your image!

Fun Fact: Scientists estimate our eyes can only see up to 10 Million colors.

Image Processing or Retouching

Involves using software to manipulate the individual pixels of our image file. The goal is to enhance the original file to fulfill our creative vision or that of our clients.

This is accomplished by adjusting the brightness, contrast, color, sharpness, cropping for composition, and using any other tools available to achieve our vision.

Pixels

In digital imaging are the individual points of color (RGB) that make up the image that we can then see on our monitor.

Image Dimensions

This is the actual size of your image, in pixels, based on the length and width. Depending on the software, you may be able to see and work with a variety of equivalent options: inches, centimeters, and more.

Image Resolution

This refers to the dimensions, measured by width and height, for the device you’re using to capture the image.

The higher the image resolution, the more detail the image will have. Higher image resolutions also result in larger file sizes.

For example, my Nikon D500 has a resolution of 5568 × 3712 pixels, and my Nikon D300 has a resolution of 4,288 x 2,848 pixels.

Image Output

A process of converting the pixels in a way that will display the image file as we intend it for others to see it. Whether it’s to be viewed on-screen or in print.